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Ash vs. Evil Dead Season 2 Will Reference Army of Darkness

Despite all the critical love and ratings success for season 1 of Starz's Ash vs Evil Dead series, hardcore fans of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead franchise may have noticed something peculiar. Despite 1993's Army of Darkness serving as Ash Williams' most recent chainsaw-wielding adventure prior to the start of Ash vs Evil Dead, the events that occurred in that cult classic film were never once directly referenced.

As many fans quickly assumed, this turned out to be due to a legal issue concerning Army, the rights to which are owned by a different studio than the first two Evil Dead films. However, it turns out that is about to change in a big way, when Ash vs Evil Dead season 2 gets underway.

During an interview with IGN at Comic-Con,Ash vs Evil Dead executive producer Rob Tapert revealed that the aforementioned rights issue has been cleared up, and that references to Army of Darkness are now fair game for the series to incorporate going forward.

"We actually can reference [Army of Darkness], and we reference it in this coming season. We just don't pull upon that universe, but this coming season Ash is able to talk about events that happened in Army of Darkness, although people are not likely to believe him, of course."

With this obstacle out of the way, Ash will be fully able to regale his friends Pablo and Kelly with tales of Evil Ash, King Arthur, Henry the Red, his long-lost medieval love Sheila, and shopping smart for quality boomsticks at S-Mart. Although as Tapert suggests, it'll probably take some convincing to sell them on the fact that Ash is a time-traveling demon slayer. Still, after all the insanity they've seen so far, it shouldn't be too hard. Time travel isn't really much weirder than the Necronomicon.

Speaking of traveling through time, one wonders whether Ash will now end up doing that at some point, in a bid to vanquish the Deadites once and for all. If he does so, one assumes that Pablo and Kelly will be along for the ride, adding yet another new wrinkle to their increasingly chaotic lives. That said, hunting monsters is arguably a lot more fulfilling than working retail. If he indeed does hit the temporal highway once again, here's hoping Ash puts a little more effort into remembering any sets of secret words he is told to recite.